About Dr. Kate

About Dr. Kate

I’m also a foodie, aspiring homesteader, and kitchen-medicine-maker. You can often find me on a slow drive around the beautiful valley I live in, or harvesting wild medicines in the mountains. . . or at home, going full introvert (hey, it happens).

In the thousands of hours that I have spent with patients, I’ve noticed a theme among women. Fatigue is always on the list of symptoms, and usually right at the top.

Women today are burned out and running on empty.

Does this sound familiar?

Here's a scenario I see a lot...

Your health has always been pretty good and you've never had much need for a doctor. Then you [went to grad school/planned a wedding/had a child/worked a super high stress job] and your health just… broke.

One day it was okay, and the next you were on a downward spiral that you never recovered from.

Now it’s a struggle just to get through the day. You don’t know if you’ll ever feel “back to your old self" again.

You’re exhausted, stressed, and any downtime you have is spent either caring for others, or tuning out from life (Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, anyone?).

You’ve been to conventional doctors who either haven’t found anything particularly off, or maybe that type of treatment just isn’t resonating for you.

You’re sure there must be something more that you can do to get your health back on track; you just need the knowledge, resources, and support to get there.

I work with women who are stressed out, burned out, and living in survival mode to help them build their health back up using natural, gentle, and nourishing therapies.

In my experience, there is usually more going on here than the physical symptoms alone. (However, of course the physical symptoms need to be worked up properly and addressed).

Maybe you’ve lost the joy in your life

Maybe you have a self-critical voice in your head, telling you you’re not good enough

Maybe you’ve played by society’s rules and sacrificed your dreams along the way

Maybe you’ve never learned the art of exquisite self-care, which is essential in recovering from burnout

Maybe you think once you finally lose the weight, everything else will fall into place (it won't)

Maybe you say “yes” to everyone but then secretly wish you could get out of it

True health is about so much more than disease management. It is about having the freedom to live an amazing life, whatever that means for you!

If this sounds like you, you’ve come to the right place.

My Story

Looking back on it now, I can see that natural medicine and healing has been woven into the fabric of my life since before I was born.

My dad worked in a health food co-op in the years leading up to my birth, and was a vegetarian and a daily practictioner of yoga. My mom was a biology student with a passion for being in the woods, always telling me the Latin names of each wildflower we hiked past.

That’s the world I was born into.

The way my dad tells it, he relied on natural medicine to keep our family healthy simply because it was the most affordable way, and we were poor. Simple as that. We never had health insurance, and doctor’s visits were strictly on an as-needed basis. Like, we went to see the doctor when I was bitten by a poisonous spider (a brown recluse, in case you were wondering), but even then I remember my mom bringing in warm herbal poultices each night to help heal the wound and ease my pain.

I was introduced to energy work when I was 14 years old. My aunt was going through a divorce, and immersed herself in new-age positivity that started her on a journey to becoming a Reiki master. I would walk to her house after school to browse her bookshelves and pick up anything that sounded interesting to me – some key choices I can remember now: The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, Hands of Light by Barbara Ann Brennan, and On Death and Dying by Caroline Myss.

I mean, I was into some heavy shit as a kid. I loved it. I devoured it. I practiced grounding and energy work in those years as an after-school hobby. I spent my free time reading books about chakras and self-improvement.

My younger brother is autistic, and for years, my mom spent her free time seeking out alternative therapies to treat his autism. She took him to naturopaths, body-talk practitioners, homeopaths, nutritionists, craniosacral therapists, and more. She read every book she could find. In those days, living in small town rural Oregon and having a gluten-free, casein-free diet was pretty out there. I mean, we had a flour mill in our laundry room where my parents would grind their own rice flour, because you couldn’t buy it! My relationship with my brother was always strained, but even so, I was fascinated by the thought that you could change your life by changing the food you put in your body(I was still eating McDonalds for lunch on the regular, but hey, it’s a process).

When I moved away to college (the perfect incubator city for a future naturopathic doctor: Eugene, Oregon), I felt the void where natural medicine and a healthy lifestyle used to be in my life. I enjoyed it at first, eating junk food and partying it up (as you do). But it crept up on me more and more. I never lost my hunger for learning, or my interest in the complexities of human relationships (foremost, our relationship with ourselves). It was still a fascination of mine, and I started to realize that my upbringing wasn’t exactly “normal." A lot of the things I had taken for granted were things that my friends had never even heard of (oh here, let me make you some tea for that).

It was in my sophomore year that I went to the registrar to declare my major in Biology: pre-med, for the sole purpose of getting into naturopathic medical school after graduation.

I made that decision over a decade ago. I’ve been through a ton of growth, change, and life experience since then, but I have never wavered on my path, and my love for this medicine has only grown.

So when I’m asked why I chose naturopathic medicine… I’m not sure I did. Maybe it chose me. For me, there was never a time before natural medicine. It is in my soul.

One of my greatest joys in life is sharing the knowledge that I've collected along the way with others who need it, and seeing them grow stronger, healthier, happier, and more resilient over time.

Credentials & experience

I graduated from the University of Oregon in 2009 with a BA in biology (emphasis pre-medical studies) and minors in chemistry, Spanish, and cultural anthropology.

I went on to spend a year and a half living in Nicaragua as a Community Health volunteer in the Peace Corps. On either side of my Peace Corps service, I worked for a non-profit public health collaborative, trying to get greater access to health care in rural Oregon communities.

Then I studied medicine at Bastyr University in Seattle, where I graduated in 2017 with a Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine.

I’m currently a naturopathic physician licensed in the State of Oregon.